How Lich and Sand King perform as teammates in Dota 2 7.41e, from ranked matches.
In Dota 2 7.41e, Lich and Sand King win 47.64% of ranked matches when playing on the same team, over 5,445 matches.
Putting these two heroes in the same lineup can create an awkward game tempo. The combination struggles to apply early pressure, often leading to a passive laning stage where both teams are more focused on farming. Sand King needs his core items to initiate effectively, and Lich doesn't provide the kind of aggressive setup that accelerates his partner's game. This frequently means you're playing from behind in map control, waiting for the perfect teamfight opportunity rather than creating your own pressure, which can allow the enemy to secure key objectives and dictate the pace.
The spell combination looks better on paper than it feels in a real fight. While Frost Shield is a great defensive tool for an Epicenter channel, the offensive synergy is clunky. Sand King's Burrowstrike is a fine setup for Chain Frost, but it's not the big clumped-up stun that Lich dreams of. In return, Lich offers little to help Sand King's initiation. Sinister Gaze can even be counter-productive, pulling a key target away from the epicenter of the fight. The success of this duo depends heavily on perfect execution and enemy mistakes, making it a fairly unreliable pairing.
How this pairing performs across skill brackets — the duo's team win rate in recent ranked matches, split by average match rank. Ranks with too few recent matches are omitted. These rows use the last 30 days of quality-filtered ranked matches, all patches in that span combined — a wider window than the patch-scoped count above, so the per-rank match totals can exceed it.
| Rank | Team win rate | Matches |
|---|---|---|
| Herald & Guardian | 52.61% | 306 |
| Crusader & Archon | 49.11% | 733 |
| Legend & Ancient | 43.91% | 649 |
| Divine & Immortal | 48.47% | 196 |
This duo's team win rate in each recent balance patch — whether the pairing is trending up or down. Patches without enough matches are omitted.
| Patch | Team win rate | Change | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7.41e | 47.64% | ▼ -1.4pp | 5,445 |
| 7.41d | 49.01% | ▲ +1.4pp | 60,822 |
| 7.41c | 47.57% | ▼ -2.1pp | 31,372 |
| 7.41b | 49.66% | — | 44,014 |
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Data updated Aug 17, 2026.